Corona Devotionals

Lord, you have cleared us out, and cut the weeds away.   Pride gets overgrown, and apathy must be ousted.   We want to whine " Why me? ", and we quibble that " It's all too much ", but You (Sovereign Lord of Heaven and Earth), call us on it.   You see our sins of selfishness and pride, and through Your Word (the Bible) and Your Spirit, You cut the poison out of us .   Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;  wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. (8)  Let me hear joy and gladness;  let the bones you have crushed rejoice. ( 9)  Hide your face from my sins  and blot out all my iniquity. ( 10)  Create in me a pure heart, O God,  and renew a steadfast spirit within me.  ( 11)  Do not cast me from your presence  or take your Holy Spirit from me. ( 12)  Restore to me the joy of your salvation  and grant me a willing spirit, to susta in me.  ...

It all started when I found a poem called "Daffodils", by William Wordsworth, and upon reading it, I knew it would be a nice piece that I could share with my friends at the nursing home this month. I had a number of other short books to read with them, but I was most excited about the daffodil poem because it was Spring-y, classical, and daffodils are in season and bloom right now: so it was perfect. What if I could bring them each a daffodil flower !? The idea jumped into my mind minutes before it was time to go. The idea was so simple, but I thought it would be a brilliant way to bring a breath of spring into the institution-bound residents that I would soon see. I pulled on some boots and in our yard and in the yards of neighbors: I found lots of daffodil greenery, but the only blooming daffodils were in my neighbor's yard. They were both already at work, and I had no other daffodil-options, and so after weighing my choices (and time), I snipped some. These weren...

Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. ( 4)  Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children,  ( 5)  to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.  ~Titus 2:3-5  ~~~ I am truly grateful for the example of  the  older women (some older -in-years, and some older -in-faith) in my life.  (I hope you know who you are!)   Their example encourages my ego when I get too "me" focused.   Their influence  shapes  my spirit, so that I know what a Godly woman looks/acts/thinks like.   Their wisdom washes over me when I get riled up. And their foundation in God and His Word keeps me tethered to the Lord because if they can live for Him , then I can too.   ~~...

Did you ever learn to take your own pulse? Either at the wrist, or by pressing on the vein in our upper (outer) neck: you can feel a heartbeat there...a pulse. Life , flowing through...steady, rhythmic: evidence of being alive. But my faith-pulse has become very weak lately...has yours? Not-so-strong, less sturdy, and hard to even discern. I can blame any number of things from stress, to busy-ness, to not enough hours in the day, but the fact remains that I have become a bit lukewarm in living for the Lord, and as a result, I have felt the Lord press a little harder, so that He (and I) might detect and find my faith pulse once again. We are not really living (as the Lord intends us to) if our hearts are not beating for the Lord and His purposes, and we know it when we are spiritually-alive. We are full. We are incensed and instigated for His purposes, and there's no better fulfillment in (this) life. Riches, delicacies, travel, and fame--- none of it compares to bei...

                                 Thank you to the lady at the grocery store that chatted with me in the check-out line and then gave me a Christian cartoon book as we bagged our groceries.   " It's a comic book for Easter ", she said lightly as she placed the small booklet it in my hand, and later when I read through it, I saw that she had  shared the Gospel of Jesus  with me in comic-form, and I thought, " What an easy way to share God's love and truth". Going into the world and " preaching the gospel to every creature " does not have to come from a pulpit, or from a professor in front of a Bible classroom. It can come with a warm smile and a tiny comic book.  And He said to them,  “Go into all the world   and preach the gospel to every creature.  ( 16)  He who believes and is baptized will be saved;   but he who does not believe will be ...